Wanderings with Wallace - the winner of our 2023 portrait competition

Last year we invited young people from around the world to join our new portrait competition. The theme? Wanderings with Wallace – in recognition of celebrating Alfred Russel Wallace’s 200^th birthday!

Alfred Wallace’s portrait has pride of place in our meeting room, next to his good – and perhaps betterrecognised – friend, Charles Darwin. He was a scientist and explorer who independently came up with the theory of evolution, prompting Charles to publish his! Their joint paper on evolution was read at the Linnean Society in 1858. Over the course of his life he made several adventurous trips to South America and the Malay Archipelago, where he collected all sorts of flora and fauna – over 126,000 specimens from the latter!

We wanted to see what kind of adventures you might get up too. What would you like to explore and discover? We received plenty of wonderful entries using all kinds of varied materials and exploring all sorts of exciting places! Surrounded by butterflies, rock pooling on the coast and trekking through the Amazon Rainforest to name but a few.

Our winner was Sienna from North London. She painted a beautiful self-portrait using lots of bright colours, swimming in the sea surrounded by fish, turtles, and all sorts of exciting marine life!